In general, motorized, manually operated fish scalers have been of the rotary type and include motors for driving or rotating a shaft and a toothed body or blade on the outer end of the rotating shaft for engaging and dislodging the fish scales. Examples of such rotary fish scalers are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,835,919 issued to B. E. Colburn et al on May 27, 1958; 3,072,956 issued to W. Olrich on Jan. 15, 1963; and 3,328,834 issued to R. A. Pulcifer on July 4, 1967.
Not only do such prior art fish scalers tend to spray scales over a large area during use, but the scalers are relatively inefficient in terms of energy use. With many rotary scalers, a relatively small area of the blade contacts the fish at any one time.
For these reasons, persons scaling fish have most often resorted to the use of manual tools for scaling fish, and although the manual tools are relatively slow, they tend to be more efficient than previously available electrically operated scalers.
In my prior application, an improved motor driven fish scaler is disclosed which was provided with a scaling blade mounted on the end of a shaft drivingly connected to an electric motor. The scaling blade has a scaling edge transverse to the axis of the drive shaft so that actuation of the motor resulted in a reciprocating motion of the scaling blade toward and away from the body of the fish for dislodging the fish scales. This device was a significant improvement over the prior art manual or power operated fish scalers.